Sunday, August 15, 2021

Boy Scouting in a Canadian Winter, An "American Idol" of the '60's, The Return of Australian Shortwave and Much More!

Hello, Hello, Hello!

Before I get to this week's offerings, I want to share a link which is very much overdue. One of my most frequent commenters goes by "Oldradios90", and three months ago, Oldradios shared, in the comments, that he or she had started a new, similar project to this one, capturing old audio from reel to reel tapes and other sources, on Archive.org. As of today, there are 46 items uploaded, including such things as: 

A Sailor's Message to His Family, 1945

 A Half Hour of Baltimore TV, 1958

A Talk on Cattle Feed and Disease

Football Game and Singing, 1961

As you can see, the items are just as varied and esoteric as those I've been sharing here. I want to take a deeper dive into the site, and encourage you to do the same. This looks like a great collection. 

I have shared the site in the links, to the right, but I'll also link it in this post. The site is found here

As a side note, OldRadios90 pointed out that last week's "very short reel" did not contain ads for Kodak cameras, despite what it said on the tape box, but for a competitor's product!

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Aside from making sure I left time for that explanation and link, I am, as I expressed on my other site, short of time in August, due to work demands that crop up this time of year, so my comments will be quite short. 

To start, here's a neat tape containing a recording of three boys describing (with the help of an adult) their adventures on a Boy Scout camping trip, during the no-doubt freezing Saskatchewan winter, in some unknown year many decades ago. 

The beginning of this tape was erased by other, less interesting material, so it begins mid thought...: 

Download:  Roy, Kenny, Bob and Ronnie Discuss Their Boy Scout Adventures In Winter in Saskatchewan

Play:

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Next up, here's an ancestor of shows like "Star Search" and "American Idol", a 20 minute segment of a program titled "Talent Scouts", from the summer of 1962, possibly August 28th. 

I should add that, unlike the shows mentioned, this was not a competition, and the performers were selected in advance due to having previously been discovered, and were being given, in many cases, their first national exposure. 

Download: Talent Scouts - Jim Backus, Harry Belafonte and Valentine Pringle

Play:

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Next up, here's an example of a type of tape that I come across fairly often, but rarely share. This is the genre of amateur musicians making a tape of themselves going through their repertoire. In this case, it's an unlabeled tape featuring an organist and a vocalist - two people or one, I don't know, but I would guess the former. Here's 22 minutes or so of R & B, Pop and Country hits from the mid '50's through the mid '60's. 

This tape starts as you'll hear it here, mid-song. 

Download: Unknown - An Organist and a Vocalist

Play:

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And here, for the first time in quite awhile, is another of the many tapes I manage to accrue, featuring mid 1970's shortwave broadcasts of "Australian Mailbag". This one, as becomes clear quickly, was recorded within days or weeks of Gerald Ford becoming president, meaning it's likely from August of 1974, but possibly (although unlikely) as late as September of that year. 

Download: Australian Mailbag - August or September, 1974

Play:

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And now it's time for our "Acetate of the Month". I made this MP3 quite a few years ago, and can't currently find the disc in question, so I'm not sure how I knew the possible station or date, but the file is titled "Possibly WGBW - Political Commentary - Possibly 3-20-40". It's certainly from a station in Louisiana, and, on side one, concerns some troubles the Governor of a nearby state was finding himself in, while on the flip side (which plays with a few skips, and far more surface noise), the speaker comments on a certain bill then being considered in Congress. 

Download: Possibly WGBW - Political Commentary - Possibly 3-20-40

Play:

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And finally, for this week's "Very Short Reel", here is an ad for Carling Black Label Beer, dated April, 1971. 

Download: Carling Black Label Beer Ad, April 1971

Play:

Here is the letter that accompanied that tape, when it went to the radio station: 



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